Lightning usage is crucial on this track. I've been fucked into 4th place, half a lap back thanks to enterprising friends. But it's also been the tool that stopped the other three from jumping at all, giving me an easy win.

The trick is the person in first place usually only gets bananas, green shells, and fake boxes.

This is why 1 on 1 Mario Kart 64 is the most boring thing in the world second place will always win if they play the game right.

And it's not really about staying in 2nd place all race long, you just gotta make sure you're in second place when you pick up an item.

Like if you played against me it would be a very trollish affair... I'd drop back in 2nd, get a red shell, shoot you, stop, and then just shadow you while constantly passing you and slowing down so you can pass me... if you don't quit by the 3rd race and never want to play Mario Kart again then my game is lacking.

When my friends and I played MK64, we got pretty damn good at aiming green shells backwards using the other player's screen. So hiding in second place wasn't an effective tactic. Being super-fast with the Z-snake and aiming backwards shots were the key to our game.

What I do is when I'm first place, I just hold onto the items until I come around to them item blocks. Since when you're first place, all you get are green shells and bananas, I just spam them backwards and pick up a new set of items.

This isn't that great of a strategy. If you are in first place, you want to keep your lead. I usually held items out as a shield. If someone tried to pass you, all you had to do was cut them off and hit them with your item. Also, it blocks red shells.

I humbly disagree, a friend of mine and I got so good at Mario Kart Wii we would only allow each other to hit each other with green shells, anything else was a "Cheap Shot!" We are Green Shell Experts at this point.

Theoretically speaking, you don't want to save the shell at the cost of other items. You should fire it backwards. IF you are concerned about it lapping backwards and hitting you, then you need to take the time to set up the backwards shot to get it stuck in an area or moving horizontally across the track instead of down it.

In the wii version the speed of the shell is affected by your speed. If you fire it backwards it will be going really slowly. If you fire it forwards it will be going much faster. So you bounce it off the wall in front of you and hope it hits someone behind who now has less warning. A daring strategy.

even then you have to be careful what angle you have to the wall it hits, if its too close to being perpendicular itll just go straight back into your face. i personally never risk it even when the walls are straight and corners are square.

Well if you shoot it forward while drifting around a corner, you can make it bounce at a more horizontal angle between the walls of the track, creating a bouncing green shell barrier that is difficult for the cars behind to pass. However, if not executed perfectly, it leads to disastrous results

Exactly! I feel like I'm the only one to hold shells every time I see these posts. Like wut you got a shell so save it in case someone is trailing you just kart block them or have it ready if they overtake.

It is a green shell from lap 1, you missed Princess Peach by just a little bit, but still managed to take her out later. The shell, bouncing around the course through the next two laps, narrowly misses every other driver. Until, at the last second, BAM!

Well the whole goal of rainbow road was to get a mushroom per lap so that you could jump past half of it. You had the first starting boost for the first lap and then the second half of that lap to try to get a mushroom for the next lap.

(Btw, back when I was in college there was a group of us in the dorms that were rather hardcore about that game when playing against each other. And the only thing we put off limits was the trick on the wario track that lets you (in time trial) do a 12 second race or whatever. The rainbow road jump was perfectly allowed-- and its AMAZING to see 4 carts flying it at the start. )

We were all rather good at it. >75% accuracy, I'd say. Which made that jump define the map. If you didn't have a mushroom it was common to leave bananas or whatnot there. Oh, and there was that one time someone had a lightning bolt and used it to screw the two leaders who were mid-jump on the 3rd lap, having stayed REALLY close the entire race and made the first two jumps.

we also banned holding a lightning in wario statement to use right before someone went off the jump. that was what we referred to as "the gentleman's rule". It wasn't so much as banned I guess, but seriously frowned upon. If you pulled that shit you sure as hell weren't a gentleman

youre in third place in a four person versus, most like no one is remotely close to you, and your item in the clutch is a lightning. Are you going to hold on to those greenshells for two minutes so you can hit someone with em? No, youre gonna burn those shells, use the lightning and hope like hell they don't ricochet at you

I've played them all... SNES was the most basic, N64 had some of the downfalls that SNES had... Wii is great and "different" maybe to people like you, but entirely and completely improved upon to people like me.

Does that actually work? In MKDD I'd assume? Because I distinctly remember that in that game the blue shell always dives down and trails behind the kart for a split second before it takes you from the rear, and it always looked to me as if you could counter it by firing a shell backwards at the last moment... (suffice to say that's not the case)

I've never been certain whether that was an intended feature or whether it's just a result of the shell physics (can anyone confirm that?), but I've always thought it was really cool that you can only dodge the shell with the humble mushroom - it encourages you to try and save a mushroom for going into first place, and holding the shroom is taking a risk in that you might be leaving yourself wide open to attacks from red shells. Mario Kart tactics.

which would mean "a shell" and not "the shell" it would be weird to somehow take that spinning shell and find a way to hold it behind the cart, now that would be ridiculous skill to be able to do that while driving a kart with eyes on the road.

AKA your point isn't invalid but no one is really going to wonder why they can hold one shell but not the three or even the last one of the three

My sister and I play MK religiously and have been doing so since the 90's. It's a fierce rivalry.

But the outcomes are always predictable. Me, the avid gamer, I get in 1st place by sliding and making good use of green shells and banana peels because that is what gaming has taught me to do. My sister, the anti-gamer, keeps drifting somewhere in the middle. It stays that way until the final lap when suddenly, because my sister has not been able to get out of 5th place, starts getting triple red shells, blue shells, and everything else she needs to beat me by 0.002 seconds. Every time. If I hang back and try to make use of the sweet weapons it just means I'm that much closer to her destruction wagon. It is like the game knows she isn't a gamer and thus over-compensates. But that is my just being bitter about this weekend's loss.

If you're in 7th/8th and you get a blue shell, you fire it and it skips all of the relevant opponents in positions close to you and hits only 1st. Generally, 1st will have such a lead on you that they will recover though, so you don't even pass them. You as the player firing the shell gain nothing other than a slight field change among opponents farthest away from you.

If you're in 2nd/3rd and the CPU or another player in 7th/8th fires a blue shell, you stand to be benefit from their actions, which as stated above benefit them little to none.

The only people who benefit from a blue shell are those who aren't getting them as a usable item.

[Note: the above was not true originally in MK64 and Super Circuit, but at this point most players associate the blue shell with the expected actions of the Double Dash - Wii era. Hopefully MK7 signals the item is transitioning back to a more 'fair' item]

I know, that's why I noted it at the end of the comment. I think this is a much better use of the item. However, the console releases are generally what define a series, so I'll be interested to see if the MK7 revision is maintained in the WiiU version of the game or they stick with the 'winged' version from Double Dash and Wii.

Sorry I misread your ending statement. I do hope that the shell stays on the ground, too. Also, it would be good if all of the players are shrunk by lightning for the same amount of time, and not the players in last get resized faster than the players in the lead.

I've been playing MK:DD for years with my little brother. We're so damn good now. We bank green shells to hit each other, crazy short cuts, A-tech boosting, hit mushroom cars and get mushrooms consistently, dodge red shells, throw bananas forwards on to each other, wall-boost, evade red shells by making them hit other characters, use items already on the track to block red shells, trigger-tech around corners, and dodge blue shells. We love the game for the crazy mili-second close finishes. 4 player is a blast.

you shoot it backwards. nethertheless, it hits you - but you are still in first place. you stumbled and slipped, but you managed to take control over the kart again.
but then - damn blue shell totally fucks you up and knocks you out. you know that feel when you're desperately crying "NOOO" and the other players next to you start laughing and telling you they're right behind you? and your heart starts beating like crazy but you slowly start to drive ahead. you're pushing this fucking button so hard but the kart has the speedup of a snail. but then you finally drive faster and faster - and suddenly a player throws a banana right in front of you and of course you cant avoid it because youre still accelerating.
you only hear the "Peoowww" when the other player reaches the goal. your big dream has been crushed.

If you have been in first place since lap one then you've had the advantage for two laps in terms of there being fewer items for you to hit on the track. The person in second place has to constantly avoid the items you are dropping for them. The person in third has twice as many items to avoid. So you should have built up a blue shell's lead on second place.

I just said this yesterday after a game: we should have the option to choose which power-ups can be gotten.

I just hate the bullet-transporters and the blue shells. They don't contribute to the game at all. The people in the back of the race get both, and either way the people driving first get fucked. I know power-ups and shells are part of the game and I love that, but the people in front will never get either of these power-ups, so either it becomes 100% random, or we need the setting. (Talking about the Wii game)

Damn, I remember once on Mario Kart Double Dash my brother was miles ahead. We were playing 4 player and each 3 of us others got one purple shell each, we hit him 3 times on the last lap, drove ahead of him and he ended up 4th. He was raging...

EDIT: Just realised I wrote purple shell instead of blue shell, but I'm used to calling it purple shell since Mario Kart 64.